Distorting Trump's Language

MAGA's terminology is an inaccurate means of describing our state of affairs--together, we must reframe and rename our political vocabulary

In the flurry of boasts, exaggerations, and untruths that President Trump emitted during yesterday’s Inaugural Address, he made evident his intention to turn reality on its head. Taking his predecessor’s successes in reducing crime, increasing oil and gas production, and sparking a manufacturing renaissance, he painted a picture of America in “decline.” (Thereby necessitating the strongman he believes himself to be to rescue us.) At times, Trump hid behind less well-understood terms such as “tariffs” to disguise his true intent. Rather than penalize foreign producers, these costs fall on consumers. Hence, the proper term is “consumer tax.”

He also threw around vague promises to “expand our territory,” which can either be perceived as an actual threat to, say, start a war with Panama by “taking back” the canal, or just one of his empty flourishes. Then, by renaming mainstays of democratic government—expert and apolitical civil servants—he turned them into the ominous “Deep State.”

All of this is meant to dazzle his sycophants and confuse his opponents as Trump desperately tries to cast himself as being all-powerful (or, in his almost pathologically narcissistic phrase, “saved by God” for this moment). This is par for the course in an authoritarian regime. Authoritarian regimes consistently twist and invent language to suit their agenda. Contrarian contributor Ruth Ben-Ghiat has written: “[A]uthoritarians turn language into a weapon, as well as emptying key words in the political life of a nation such as patriotism, honor, and freedom of meaning. We are well on our way in America to what I call the ‘upside-down world of authoritarianism,’ where the rule of law gives way to rule by the lawless; where those who take our rights away and jail us pose as protectors of freedom; where the thugs who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6 are turned into patriots; and where ‘leadership requires killing people,’ as Tucker Carlson recently put it, justifying Vladimir Putin's killing of Alexei Navalny.”

We cannot accept MAGA terminology. Since an “executive order” denotes a proper, legal exercise of power, that term should certainly not be applied to President Trump’s cascade of executive pronouncements (most over-reaching and unconstitutional, others just meaningless). They may be “edicts” or ‘bogus decrees,” as historian Jonathan Alter noted in our recent Talking Feds podcast. But they do not dignify the term “executive order.”

“Pro-life,” is another example, in that it no way defines a movement that supports forced birth laws that kill women and have increased infant mortality. In the abortion arena, the right-wing comes up with non-words like “post-birth abortion”)to express fantastical charges. And while we are at it, “abortion ban” is not nearly descriptive enough. Laws robbing women of bodily autonomy and forcing them to go to term with a pregnancy should properly be called “forced birth.”

At The Contrarian, we generally don’t use the term “mainstream media.” If size determines “mainstream” status, the set of media outlets that consistently and precipitously lose market share should not make the cut. The Economic Times reported that CNN’s “ratings have dropped significantly since … Trump's re-election with a reported 49 percent decrease since the month of November.” My former employer, The Washington Post lost hundreds of thousands after owner Jeff Bezos quashed an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. In terms of audience size, Joe Rogan or Brian Tyler Cohen may be more “mainstream” than CNN, depending on the time of day. And frankly, if a significant percentage of the electorate watches and reads no “mainstream media” how mainstream can it be?

Finally, MAGA Republicans have absconded with the term “conservative.” For the modern conservative movement, “conservative” meant adherence to certain principles: limited government, respect for the Constitution, belief in objective reality, United States’ leadership in the world against totalitarianism, judicial restraint, and personal rectitude. The MAGA cult vehemently rejects all of these fundamental beliefs and aspirations. Instead, MAGA Republicans are eager to empower the executive with unlimited power (and applaud Trump’s unprecedented and unlawful assertion of executive power), flout the Constitution, deny scientific facts (climate change, what climate change?), elect a man who immediately withdraws us from the Paris Agreement on day one, and cheer on a Supreme Court that has become unabashedly partisan and ethically compromised.

When a movement or a philosophy utterly changes its tune, it is time to rename it. If you reject capitalism in favor of cronyism and trade in the rule of law for punitive retribution, you do not get to keep calling yourself a “conservative.” If you free participants in a violent insurrection you lose the mantle of “law and order,” once a mainstay of conservatism. (The most extreme MAGA members of the Republican Party are the worst defenders, hence the least “conservative” in the traditional meaning of the word.)

So let us stop calling MAGA Republicans “conservative.” “Authoritarian” or “reactionary” or White Christian nationalists, but not in the least bit “conservative.” After the rollout of a frighteningly radical agenda that would grossly expand executive power and wreak havoc on our society, let’s consign “conservative” to the linguistic dust bin.

There certainly are people who still adhere to the values that once defined Lincoln’s Republican Party—fidelity to the Constitution, equal justice under the law, belief in science and support for free markets, legal immigration, and American leadership in the world.

Today, they are called “Democrats.”